tuesday's notes | december thirty-first

It is very, very early here on the West Coast of the United States. I am sitting on my couch with my middle, he is up with a nasty bout of croup, and I am up, sitting next to him, waiting for the dawn and letting my mind meander to far flung places, to the ocean so near and of crossing the prime meridian where it is very likely already a new year. 

Fourteen years ago, my husband and I, expecting our first born, watched, waited and toasted the new millineum. We watched the telecasts from all across the world, watched as the sun rose on another side of the globe long before it set its rays upon the shadows of our window panes. Less than two weeks later our lives would be turned upside down when we welcomed our oldest into the world. I like to think that I was a practical dreamer back then. Practical in every sort of way with unrealistic expectations of how my life would be made. Now here I am, practicality thrown out the window, with very little expectations of how things will be on any given day. 

I am quite ready for the New Year. I am ready for things to start anew, for new plans, for new adventures; however, I am also ready for the adventures that are already here: raising my boys, living this life, running alongside a world full of hope and wonder. 

So as the sun goes down on the ocean today, as it rising somewhere else, I will be toasting all the good, all the unexpected, all the hard work. I will be toasting you, and you; I will toast to your family and mine; to the lost and wandering, the found and discovered; I will toast to all things hidden and unknown, to all the open hearts and to all the many open doors. 

cheers to a very happy and abundant New Year. xxoo

we say goodbye, with smiles and tears,

to this passing of years.

we lie in anticipation of what the new day will bring,

unknown abundance in sown fields

hope and resolution

clearing away the noise to find what rests in our hearts.

the quiet voice that nourishes our soul.

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tuesday's notes | oh tannenbaum!

 Dear Boys,

We need to work together a bit more. Seriously.

I will love you until my dying breath, but truly, when you three are arguing with each other (as well as with me) over the size shape and variety of tree we want to bring home for this holiday season, I am so ready to jump ship and swim to the shore in the New Year.  I know that three of us are particularly visual and creative, AND strong-willed opinionated souls, but thats why we need to work as a team. We could storm castles with our out-of-the-box ways! But when we are feeling fractious and divisive -well lets just say that there is nothing as cheerless and merry-less as that.

All things being equal, we did, in the end, pull it together.  You younger two realized the need, at least this year, for a tree that is not the size of Mt. Everest, and I was forced to let go, temporarily anyhow, of my need to control the situation when my perfect tree was sold to someone else while we were bickering. In the end, your dad and, you, mr. oldest, saved the day by just taking the tree where we had some kind of consensus and purchasing it. Phew.

Then we all relaxed! It was amazing! 

And thank you for allowing me to kill time while your dad had to run go get cash, with my camera and you all as models.  See how much fun we have when we are not bickering (and I realized, how much you all need a haircut before the 24th). 

 cheerio for now boys!
love you three so very deeply!
xxoo

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This is a series called tuesday's notes. You are welcome to write along if you want, just leave a comment with your blog address if you decide to write one and I will be sure to come say hello. These "Notes" can be notes to your self (future, past or present), notes to the rude person who cut you off in line, notes to your children, note's to your parents... I think you get the idea. Would love if you "wrote along!" xo

tuesday's notes | into december

gosh. it is hard to believe that I haven't visited this space in so long.  It is early morning here. My youngest, after having thrown up for a good portion of the wee early morning hours, is finally asleep on the couch.  I am drinking much needed coffee and desperately trying to come up with a post that reconnects me to my online family. So ta-da! here it is. 

I have missed being over in this space. As of late it has been hard to find several minutes to cobble together to write a full-fledged post. The moments ticking up to Thanksgiving were harder than I thought they would be.  I was surprised that the absence of my mother felt raw and re-opened all over again.  Loss is a funny thing and it often requires deep breaths; and then plowing on into life despite it all. Then, with the last week of November melting into Thanksgiving, then into Advent (along with everyone getting the stomach flu) I have spun myself silly with all sorts of imagined holiday merriment and busy-ness. Which quite frankly, I really don't like the spinning part, especially when my perfectionism coincides with my productivity being at an all time low.

I am vowing hence forth to not spin myself into a perfectionist frenzy -it defeats the purpose of any celebration. I love, love, love making things so I am trying to slow down long enough to give my self room for error AND time for craft. It is hard with the ever-looming deadline of December 25th, but I think I can make it to the other side. Craft, or no craft.  

So note to self: give of your time and your craft, not of your spinning, feverish, holiday, crazy-making.

How are you handling the Holidays? I would love to know. 

xxoo

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This is a series called tuesday's notes. You are welcome to write along if you want, just leave a comment with your blog address if you decide to write one and I will be sure to come say hello. These "Notes" can be notes to your self (future, past or present), notes to the rude person who cut you off in line, notes to your children, note's to your parents... I think you get the idea. Would love if you "wrote along!" xo

five | november writes :: autumn falling/tuesday's notes

It is autumn. In the dark of my bedroom, in the deepest part of my sleep, I dream and dream again about about the street of my childhood and the piles of leaves I plowed through in the dying rays of the day. The way the air, crisp and cold met your face when you stepped outside and how the leaves that fell from the trees where but an echo, a lyrical prelude to the snow that would soon fall from the sky.

Fall and Winter always held hands in Colorado, they were bedmates, sharing October, fighting over November as if they were children. Eventually Autumn would bow her head and give way to the gales of Winter's wind and the gallons of snow of December.  However, these two seasons differ in the day to day, they always seemed to love the dance, the exchange that November brought.

In the dark of my bedroom I remember last November as well. The dark wind that echoed down the hallows of my heart. Somewhere in the night, one year ago, my mother's body let go and she passed on. And though I don't wish that she held on longer, I so wish I could have been with her more before she left us.

So in the dark, in this Autumn of falling, I dream about the ways I fall and fail. And I dream about the struggle, the bedfellows that Winter and Fall are. I dream of my childhood and I dream of the childhood of my own boys. And I dream of the days when I will reconcile the Fall and Winter of my soul and let fall, into the passing of dreams my own failures.

And amidst these ashes, there we will find hope, a phoenix rising in glorious song, the sweet cantor bellowing from our soul.

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 excuse the rambling.
 joining in with amanda and write alm for november-prompt-a-day. 
tomorrow's prompt is: regret(s) won't you join in?
 (I am also killing two birds with one stone and doubling up for my tuesday's notes)

tuesday's notes | be inspired

dear self, try to love life a bit more today. be a bit more inspired by the small, those tiny bits that tie you to this earth. find inspiration under the jar jam stuck, sticky sweet upon the shelf; look for it blowing in under the door as the gales rattle your stoop; open it up as you work through your day and remember how grateful you are for all things as you close your book at night. love life a bit more today and I think you will be surprised how much life will love you back. xxoo

This is a series called tuesday's notes. You are welcome to write along if you want, just leave a comment with your blog address if you decide to write one and I will be sure to come say hello. These "Notes" can be notes to your self (future, past or present), notes to the rude person who cut you off in line, notes to your children, note's to your parents... I think you get the idea. Would love if you "wrote along!" xo

tuesday's notes | on battling

Last night,  I got up from our bed in the back to do a last walk through the house before turning the lights completely out and going to sleep. With our quiet bedside lamps on, and me, ever distracted, I failed to notice our pups sleeping right next to the bed. So then not only did I trip over one of our dogs (black on brown carpet) and I was then sent sailing as I tripped on the other dog (black on brown carpet) as I was thrown off kilter from the first. They meant me no harm, they just like to be close to me/us and I just didn't see them in the dim light. One of them bolted up and hung her head guiltily. The other one just lay there looking down at me with deep brown eyes that seemed to say, "Try to be a bit more careful next time." I nicked and bruised the right side of my body. Not horribly so, but enough to have a wee bit of blood, and for me to lie on the floor temporarily frozen in humiliation and pain. With a bruised ego and a helping hand from the husband, I regained my composure and went on through the house checking on the boys, turning off the lights, grabbing a glass of water before I went back to bed.

It was only then, when I climbed back into bed, and opened up my laptop to write, that I found that I had a few tears stuck to the back of my eyelids.  They never erupted into full blown tears (though in hindsight maybe I needed a good cry), and at that moment I called it a night and curled up into bed, and went to sleep.

Sometimes it feels like there are battles everywhere you go and everywhere you look; some large, some small. Often you need to hitch up your skirt (or pants, or skort, or shorts) and head on into the fray, scrapping around like some hen, searching for remnants of your ego scattered somewhere in the coop.

And other times you need to call it a night/ a day/ a wrap, and start over fresh; go to sleep with only a memory of the ridiculousness in your head.  And just let it go.

Life is a bit of a balance somedays isn't it?  Especially with all the many things we have piled underfoot.

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This is a new series called tuesday's notes. You are welcome to write along if you want, just leave a comment with your blog address if you decide to write one and I will be sure to come say hello. These "Notes" can be notes to your self (future or past), notes to the rude person who cut you off in line, notes to your children, note's to your parents... I think you get the idea. Would love if you "wrote along!"
xxoo

tuesday's notes | grateful for the world

Hello World. I am so grateful for you today. I am so grateful that you were able to share some of your more glorious wonders with my family and me this past weekend: the colors of Autumn, hushed wind,  laughter, farm-to-table food, sunsets around a campfire, the bending grass, tracks of small mammals, wild turkeys. I loved watching the boys with their friends: run through camp, hanging out in trees, climbing up forts, creating their own wild kingdom.
                         
                                      It was wondrous.

I am always so grateful when the boys are able to run astride nature in this way; to be able to touch the circle with which they are a part of, yet so difficult to hold onto when one lives in a big city.

So today's notes are this. Just the grateful warmth I feel in my heart for the small kingdoms we stumble upon, that touch our hearts and give strength to our souls.

This is a new series called tuesday's notes. You are welcome to write along if you want, just leave a comment with your blog address if you decide to write one and I will be sure to come say hello. These "Notes" can be notes to your self (future or past), notes to the rude person who cut you off in line, notes to your children, note's to your parents... I think you get the idea. Would love if you "wrote along!"
xxoo

tuesday's notes | to my 16 year old self

Midmorning here. I am dashing around between emails and meetings and I am finding it hard to stay focused as I am bit tired. I have been up in the night lately over thinking and over plotting, which is how I end up writing a post like this. All those moments caught up in my brain, trying to stretch out of me, longing to be shared.

Here is a new series called tuesday's notes. You are welcome to write along if you want, just leave a comment with your blog address if you decide to write one and I will be sure to come say hello. These "Notes" can be notes to your self (future or past), notes to the rude person who cut you off in line, notes to your children, note's to your parents...
I think you get the idea. (or if you want I could create prompts for the Note's).

Here are my tuesday's notes to my 16 year old self, small pieces of advice that I wish someone had been brave enough or knowledgeable enough to tell me (you know really tell, without being mean).

*love your body:: love it no matter what size it is and what clothes you wear. Love it so, as there are others out there who will try to say you only will be valuable if you look a certain way. 

*it is normal to be moody around your period:: once you know that it is not all in your head, you are able to become more aware of your actions and your moods. 

*It is normal to crave certain foods:: you are not crazy when you want to knock down the dude in front of you to get at a chocolate bar. Now that you are aware you will crave certain foods, you can be more prepared.

*it is normal for your period to be irregular:: Don't you feel better knowing this? The one reassuring thing about adolescence is that nothing is regular! Embrace the ups and downs. 

*listen to your body, eat when you are hungry, stop when you are full:: your body knows better than anyone what you need. Don't measure, don't count calories. Your body knows. Trust her. Girls often punish themselves when they feel that they have eaten too much, never taking into account growth spurts, sporting events, etc. Don't punish yourself! listen to your body instead. 

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what would you add to this list? I would really love to know!!!